Donald
Trump is fighting to make Americans perceive immigration as a
net negative. While it’s important now more than ever to focus on protecting
community, this must be done in a matter that calls for hope as much as it does
for a stop to bad policy.

Attorney
General Jeff Sessions' statements today in Nogales represent a call to see
immigrants as less than human.

This
dehumanization has roots in Trump’s campaign rhetoric, in which he
called Mexicans living in the United States dangerous criminals. Nonetheless, it came as a surprise when Politico reported from Nogales that Sessions called for felony charges against those
who “get married in order to gain legal status.”

Lin Manuel
Miranda’s call that “love is love is love is love is love” during last year’s Tony Awards is not heard by those in Washington, D.C. Instead, love must be scrutinized and
examined, called into question for questions over a piece of paper.

There is no
longer a debate over what policy should be, but rather over whether Americans living
without documentation can experience and act upon basic human emotions.

Even if
this anti-marriage measure, like the travel ban before it, is stayed and blocked by the courts, the
constant introduction of non-citizens as non-human requires more than protests
and vigils. It requires reaching out to Americans to demonstrate at the most
basic level that other humans are indeed humans.

ASU students
were already fighting this stigma before the election, but now their work is
integral toward combatting federal policy that harms hundreds at this University alone.

ASU alumna
Reyna Montoya founded Aliento,
“an undocumented and youth-led organization” that uses art not only
to tell stories but to express their hopes for the future.

“We have
children, teens and adults go through an art healing process to learn not only
to cope but to express their feelings and their emotions and their fears and
their hopes," Montoya said. "We also make sure families have policy processes that are
listening to them."

This form
of organizing also has a public face when Aliento hosts open mic nights
and arts shows alongside ally trainings.

These
trainings understand that allies are needed. Allies have to go from receiving
information to actively spreading it and getting it out to their communities.

In doing
so, they need to move beyond the messaging of vulnerable communities and need
to embrace narratives like the hopes that Aliento puts in its messaging.
These are basic human emotions that need to be brought out beyond the standard
victim narratives. Part of the reason it is so easy to dehumanize vast
swaths of America for the current administration is that these people
aren’t being looked at beyond that level.

Trump and
Sessions have been successful in dehumanizing millions of American neighbors,
families, workers and students. A two-dimensional view of what it means to be
undocumented, highlighting victim narratives and forgetting their hopes for the
future, is part of that.

Allies
should work with organizations like Aliento and other advocates for America’s
undocumented population, rather than taking their information from the news. These are conversations that should be held on campus — DACA students aren't an abstraction but ASU classmates.

We need to
be allies that understand people as they are, or our model will be no better
than Jeff Sessions' anti-marriage statements this morning.